[PUP] Water intrusion

[Truelove39 at aol.com]

This  was one of the first wake-up calls we had soon after purchasing 
Seahorse. Her  static engine room vent is on the starboard side about 4 feet off the  
deck. It is a vertical duct which terminates on the side of the pilothouse in 
 two horizontal stainless louvers, one above the other. Each of these had a  
fiberglass cover, open on the bottom, but the cover extended only just  below 
the bottom of the louvers. A baffle on the inside was supposed to  drain any 
air-entrained water outside, and under normal conditions it did  just that. 
However this proved inadequate when we encountered 50-60 knots  in the 
Chesapeake. The wind was on the beam and lasted about 20 minutes or  so. The spindrift 
and rain was pretty much horizontal, and on our next ER check  we noticed it 
was wet beneath the duct. Also, the partial vacuum  created in the pilothouse 
caused the sliding window drains on the  windward side to bubble water and air 
up through them. Other than stuffing  the window channel with paper towels, we 
can't think of a cure for that, but we  did have the fiberglass louver covers 
extended downward about 18  inches. Better now, we think, but we'll have to 
wait until it's well-tested  again to be sure. 
 
It  was cool that day, and we had the ER door open to supply a little heat as 
the  heating plant was secured
It  never occurred to us then, that had we kept the ER door shut, the vent's 
twin on  the port side (a battery locker vent) would have not have contributed 
to the  vacuum in the boat and worsened the water ingress. We also think that 
operating  the ER blower might have reduced the vacuum a bit, too. 
 
Regards,
 
John
"Seahorse" 
 
> Aboard  Bluewater we took a 
little water through our big portside vent, with the  water finding 
its way into the master stateroom overhead--first time  ever!   In 
spite of securely taping our lazarette, we discovered a  small 
nuisance leak through the tape into the lazarette and cannot figure  
out how the water's getting in.  Chris reports lazarette leaks over  
her inverter control panel; she was investigating that late last 
night  when Moana Kuewa took a gusher-about five gallons came 
cascading down the  engine room air intake.





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